Dangerous Games
by Prime627
Summary: Starscream is doomed to race for a mech he doesn't like. Arcee wants her family to stay together. This year, they race on the powerful, dangerous, and beautiful Water Predacons, and they race against themselves, even when Primus ties their lives together. But even if Starscream could convince himself he doesn't like Arcee anyway, only one can win. Is he strong enough to let her?


The water Preds were the ones to watch, though you only encountered them on a little island on the Sea of Rust, where I lived. It had a total of three thousand bots, and while it was nearby Iacon, Kaon, and Vos in equal directions, it was decades behind. We didn't have datapads, electicity...it wasn't that we didn't want them. We had no way to get them here with the combination of the Water Preds and the standard Preds.

Water Preds have tattered wings they used to steer, and unlike the standard Preds, they are bloodthirsty. They are bigger, stronger, and harder to tame, and their siren songs draw mechs in like gnats. I confess to being already under their spell. Water Preds are not like the Ground Preds as well. Ground Preds are wingless, easier to tame, and a favorite snack of the Water Pred. As I think, I feed a pede of a Ground to a soon-to-be-tamed Water. She snaps it up, then goes back to keening for the ocean. She will be ready to run in the races once I drag the sea out of her.

I have a few Waters to care for. Megatron trusts me with those, and he trusts his only son (his favorite worker) with one, the one I deem for him to ride in the races, an event that happens once a year in a specific month, whenever it is when the Waters trot out onto our beaches and cause havoc...a week later, the festival begins, and then three weeks later is the race. I race to keep my Water, the one I adore more than anything.

Corrosion stares at me with dark optics. He wants to run, wants to get out of his stable, but Megatron has his muzzle wrapped in copper wiring, though it has no effect on him to keep him still or tame. It only marks him as a breeder, and when the breeding mechs come to him, instead of snapping up their digits, he comes relatively quietly.

I have Elzia ready to take his coding, though I can tell already that she will not produce. She is a disappointment in breeding and in racing, so I will have Novo ride her this year, to keep him safe and behind me, where Corrosion and I will be safe. Nova is Megatron's son, who was the cause of his carrier's death. The medics knew that Skyburst had a weak spark and the closer she got to her due date, the more her body fell apart. When Novo was born, her spark gave out and she died, having fought for weeks to keep her going. Megatron loved his son dearly, and he had taken me into the trade of racing and breeding Ground Preds and the beautiful, deadly Waters when my sire died, leaving me orphan on the beach. My carrier had trotted off to Iacon on her Ground, a femme I cannot remember the name of. I learned to distrust femmes, but a few still catch my optic.

Elzia tosses her head and the bells around her harness jangle. The bells annoy her, and I begin to pluck each one off. You cannot simply drape a Water in charms and hope they will keep you safe. I watched a Water take a mech's arm off and run back to the Sea of Rust trailing flowers and bells around its ankles. I fished it out of the Sea later and pressed iron to its neck. It was calm immediately, and now she is our best breeder. She is heavily carrying, and I suspect that she will drop her load of eggs soon. She makes a soft sound as I pass and I drop a lump of spark into her feeding bucket. She chomps it loudly.

I tie Elzia outside, pull her tail aside, look at her valve. I look down at the bucket of water at my pedes, and watch the sponge float in it. If Elzia doesn't produce, I will have to release her after the race. If she turns out carrying before the race, Novo will not race her. I have another femme Pred, who is more promising. Her name is Milky Way. She breeds, runs, and is tame under a heavy blanket of flowers. I can put a digit in her mouth and she will let me, but only if I have the flowers on her.

Corrosion is led out, three workers having a hold on his lead ropes. He snorts and walks quickly, arching his neck and digging claw marks into the dirt. He likes the look of Elzia, and his spike drops from its housing. I clean her valve, then walk to Corrosion, who snorts down at me and rears. I press my hand into his chest and push him back so he stands on his hind legs, and he gives a roar of displeasure. Waters were not meant to stand on their hind legs for long periods of time, but I can get Corrosion to behave. I clean his spike, give his belly a swat, and I jump out of the way before he lands on me.

And then he is on Elzia, forcing his spike into her valve. She tips her head back, he bites her throat. He draws Energon, and she whimpers, her hips dropping and her legs spreading out as if the ground has gone slick. Just as soon as it begins, Corrosion detaches and pulls his spike out of her clenching valve, his coding dripping down her legs as she rights herself and shakes off. I press a length of pole into her valve, pushing all the coding into her womb, and I pat her shoulder. She lowers her helm and snaps at the plates of Cybertron as she dances in place. She hates the pole, but Megatron has found out that it improves the chance of the femme carrying if all the coding is forced into one place. It makes since, but I cannot imagine the feeling of a cold, hard object rammed deep inside me just after the warmth of a spike. Her wings fan and flap, but they are useless out of the water, and the only thing it does to me is get me cold. I pull the pole out and give it to the watching mechs, the new ones Megatron hired. They flinch at the streaks of fluid before taking it, gingerly pinching the end that was in my hand.

"It's fluid, not acid."

"Gross," one of them coughs and I snort. They look up at me, and I shake my helm. I do not mind breeding the Waters. They are strange, rough where Grounds are tender and the standard Preds are loving, but I love them all the same. Their siren song has made a new cord in my being, one I cannot cut from myself without losing a major part of me.

Novo perches on the fence, about to mount his favored mech Ground, Smokebreather. It is an all-black mech with red optics and a spattered red chest, almost like one of Earth's birds, but it looks as though Smokebreather had eaten a human family the way a Water eats sparks: messy and loudly. But I was there when Smokebreather was dropped, and his startling appearance is genetic. "Why don't you plug in, Starscream? If Corrosion's face is anything to go by, she's lovely inside." He loves to tease me, and I have to let him, not only because he is the son of Megatron. But because my boss breathes down my neck now.

"Will she carry?"

I turn and look up at the former warlord. I shrug a little. "We will see, won't we, sir?"

But Megatron had seen what he wanted to see: Elzia licking her side, Corrosion moving to lick at his still-hard spike, Nova taking Smokebreather out for a trot. His optics were glued on the latter, and he leaned against the fence. "Is my femme well?"

He means Comet, a blue femme Grounder with a white face. She is older, but abnormally large and abnormally fast. I suspect she is a mix of both the Grounders and the Waters. But Megatron insists he had bred her carrier with nothing but Grounders, and they had been pure. I offered a small joke: Maybe Comet's carrier had a secret lover come to her stall every so often. He had laughed at me, then gave me a broom to sweep the stables. I took it.

"She has never been better."

"Tack her up."

"Aye, sir," I said, and I turned. I walked to the Royal Stable, where Smokebreather was born. Anyone born here was in for a life of preening, tender care, specific breeding times, and near-constant breeding.

Comet had been bred this morning, and she still smells of it. She watches me with her good optic, breathing heavily. I touch her chest, and feel her spark hammer. She had been startled, and when I turn, I am rewarded with the sight of her mate rearing up and beating his front talons against the wall, scoring them down. The wall stood between him and a young Grounder with her audios pinned back and her tail lifted. If I looked, I knew she would be dripping.

Days aren't usually as exciting as this. Usually the Grounders are quiet and the Waters relax and there are a few buyers, but this week is "spring", hard to believe since the wind is so frigid, it might as well still be winter. This is also the time the Waters really want to run.

I take Comet and deliver her to Megatron, who takes her reins and doesn't even thank me or look my way. He mounts up and takes off after his son, and I am left in the dust, though Corrosion is being led to me. I look at him and he stares at me, huffing and narrowing his optics.

Taking special time off, I lead Corrosion down to the beach, something a bot just starting off with a Water should _never_ do. I see Corrosion turn less into Predacon and more into a monster, his teeth flashing and his neck curving. He is like a sea serpent, but I want him as a Predacon. I take his helm in my hands and I touch his chest. He relaxes, and we walk into the surf.

When we come back, we are both wet. Novo watches us, his optics searching for anything to tease us about, but instead he takes another bite out of his solid Energon cube and he whispers something into one of his "friend"'s audio, and they descend into hysterical laughter. They sit on the top rail of the fence that marks the edge of the track, and I hope they fall. I give one of the Grounders (a young, playful mech) a look, and he nudges Novo roughly, making the mech fall forward and strike the mud hard. That makes his friend laugh harder.

I return Corrosion to his stall and I stroke between his optics on his nose. He huffs warm air, and he turns his helm away from mine. We sigh at the same time, and I climb the ladder up to my personal quarters, but I don't sleep when I lay down on my berth in my small quarters.

I dream of a time where I race Corrosion on my own, where I race him for myself, for sport, and not under Megatron's name.

But that day seems to never come, and my optic lids grow heavy. And then my optics close.

 **Okay. Apology time. *Claps hands***

 **I sorta kinda disappeared for a while. I've been having a rough time, and my latest relapse (I scratched, didn't cut) earned me 72 hours of parental supervision. I have reached the near-end of that. Squee..**

 **So, here's my latest story based off of The Scorpio Races. I love that book, and I'm making a short about Ratchet, and it's based off a YouTube video I saw a couple months back about a little boy cat losing his family. I wondered what had happened to Ratchet and why he was so mean and cold, and I thought I could explain that by writing the short. So, keep your eyes and optics peeled for** **Some Guardian** **.**

 **On another good note, other than I'm back and I'm writing again, /THAT GIRL I WAS TALKING ABOUT A WHILE BACK, YEAH SHE AND I ARE DATING/. HAZAH. x3**


End file.
